Susan Rice and the “Spontaneous Protest”

Did Obama's UN ambassador deliberately deceive us about Benghazi--or was she herself deceived?

At his news conference Wednesday, President Barack Obama postured as the young Galahad striding out onto the schoolyard to stop a pair of bullies from beating up a girl.

Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham had charged U.N. Amb. Susan Rice with misleading the nation when, five days after the Benghazi attack in which Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, she appeared on five TV shows to say it had all resulted from a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video.

Susan Rice, thundered Obama, “made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.

“If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. … But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”

The indignation here is more than a bit cloying. After all, Rice’s rendition of the worst terror attack on the U.S. since 9/11 was utterly false.

There never was a protest.

Rice misled the nation. No one now denies that. The question is: Did Rice deceive us, or was she herself misled or deceived?

Far from being a convincing defense, Obama’s remarks call into question the competence or the truthfulness of the White House itself.

Consider again what Obama said.

Susan Rice “had nothing to do with Benghazi.”

But if she “had nothing to do with Benghazi,” why was she sent out “at the request of the White House” to explain Benghazi?

Who at the White House programmed Rice? Did she push back at all when fed this bullhockey about Benghazi? Or does she just parrot the party line when told to do so?

Why did the White House not send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or National Security Adviser Tom Donilon? Or did they decline to go?

The president says Rice “gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.”

And who might be the source of that “intelligence” about the protest in Benghazi, when there was no protest in Benghazi?

Rice was scripted to tell the nation it was not a “preplanned” attack, when that is exactly what it was. The CIA knew it within hours, because two of its former Navy SEALs died in the attack, and other CIA people survived and got out the next morning.

Here we come to the heart of the matter.

Though journalists, CIA personnel and State Department people listening in real time all knew from intercepts and reports back from our people on the ground that this was a terrorist attack involving automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, the fabricated story — that it came out of a protest, a protest that never happened — was pushed relentlessly by the administration.

Jay Carney pushed it two days after the attack. Petraeus pushed it on the Hill three days after the attack. Rice went on five TV shows five days after the attack to recite it chapter and verse.

Obama held off calling it a terror attack for weeks in TV interviews and mentioned the video half a dozen times at the U.N. on Sept. 25.

Another question arises from the press conference.

When Obama said Rice “gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her,” was that also the best intelligence the president of the United States had?

If it is, if five days after the attack Obama was that clueless about what actually happened in Benghazi, he ought to clean house at his intelligence agencies.

From the outside, it appears everybody was on board to describe the attack as “spontaneous” and attribute it to the video.

Yet none of this was true. And many inside knew, during or right after the attack, the truth about what had happened and were leaking it to the press. That brings us to the question: Why?

Why would the administration hierarchy collaborate in putting out a phony story denying there had been a terrorist attack and attributing it to a spontaneous riot that never happened?

Two answers come to mind:

One, the “spontaneous protest” cover story would enable Obama to keep pushing his campaign line that he had gotten Osama bin Laden and that al-Qaida was “on the run” and “on the path to defeat.” A successful al-Qaida-type attack in Libya would have contradicted his best foreign policy claim.

Second, if it was a spontaneous attack, an attack no one could have foreseen, predicted or prevented, then that would absolve the administration of responsibility for failing to see it coming, failing to provide greater security, failing to have forces prepared to deal with it when our guys were being shot and killed for seven hours.

It gets worse. We now know that al-Qaida operatives have penetrated the Senate staff and are manipulating John McCain’s daily schedule. They shunted him *away* from the private hearings on Benghazi and sent him to a grandstanding press conference! I blame Sharia law.

The aroused Mr. Obama has firmly intoned that spokeslamb Susan Rice was sent forth, and evangelically “gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.”

I note the avoidance of any presidential endorsement that the intelligence was accurate, that it was something the American people could count on to explain behaviors and lives lost. But the intelligence was prepared, or “provided” for Ms. Rice to use, the President asserts, confidential stuff presumably furnished to some end and gain, quite beyond her ken. I suspect she’s a most faithful and unquestioning spear-carrier, even unto any Thermopylaean fix.

A confession: My desktop computer asks no questions of me, but it is faithful. It goes in whatever direction I send it. That’s a virtue, as I see it. But if it crashes … ah, well, then maybe it’s my fault for exposing it to viruses lurking at unseemly sites; for effectively feeding the unwitting home-bot some smelly trash.

Kid Galahad of the Chicago Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight was right. The dottering Republican senators should lay off Ms. Rice. Take on the responsible chucklehead(s) who sent the naive lady in the wrong direction.

please let this go. do you actually think the President of the United States would attempt to “cover up” the fact that while “al Qeada is on the run”; it -or groups “affiliated with al Qeada” – still had the capability to launch, what very well may have been; an attack on a CIA base of operations, presented to the American public (and Libyians) as a U.S. Consulate? and you futher understand that the U.N. Ambassador is not privy to the same “intelligence” as the President’s Press Secretary, the Director of the CIA, and/or the Secretary of State? it very well may be that Rice was fed disinformation by the White House (or CIA) prior to her infamous “Sunday talk show” tour; but I continue to be amazed by the pundits and politicos who are trying to equate this to Watergate. again; it would appear that what was “covered up” was the fact that the CIA was running a major covert operation UNDER State Department cover. ergo; the truth is; Susan Rice had nothing to do with what transpired in Benghazi on 9/11/12.

It is sad that I have absolutely no faith that we will ever hear the truth on this issue. If we do get the truth, aside from appointee’s being guillotined, no one will be held accountable. That is no one with any real power will be held to account.

We all are pretty sure of what happened, I just hope this shows that though we are all war weary, we cannot be so weary enough to let down our guard to the point of lying to ourselves.

Well it would be interesting to hear an explanation for the incident in Egypt, as well as similar incidents in other countries, that happened at the same time. These have been conveniently forgotten.

Do people think that the other protests were magically orchestrated from Libya? What set them off?

As for the contention that rocket-propelled grenades and mortars mean “premeditation”, that would be persuasive if it were not Libya we were taking about — a place where a myriad of yahoos raided weapons caches after the U.S. went blundering in there, and who rove about looking for mischief on a daily basis.

one more comment. “Why did the White House not send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or National Security Adviser Tom Donilon? Or did they decline to go?” perhaps there were remaining CIA employees/contractors (or locals retained by the CIA) in Benghazi had yet to be extracted? perhaps, despite the attack in 9/11/12; the original operation was still “operating”? seems to me it was the previous administration that cared little about the “cover” of CIA agents (and the assets they recruited).

A successful al-Qaida-type attack in Libya would have contradicted his best foreign policy claim.

Contradicted? Really? As in, there has been no diminishing of al-Queda capabilities?

I agree that Obama most certainly soft peddled the al-Queda attack because of the elections. Though, neither did he explicitly deny it or refuse to characterize the attack as an act of terror. I would also add that the GOP were equally willing to paint the tragedy as a gross national security and foreign policy failure which is also quite a stretch.

I’m sorry to see TAC be drawn into this non-issue. And Buchanan should never be allowed to write about anything involving people of color, as his racism will always take precedence over what passes for his reason.

Actually, Mr. Buchanan is of course correct in his assessment but is missing an important part of the puzzle: when this malicious lie was first put forth by the Obama administration, it had the effect of scapegoating an American citizen for supposedly starting an international conflagration with a youtube video.

There were “serious” (in the world of punditry) discussions about whether American service personnel had been put in harm’s way by some American evangelist’s homemade video, and of course…whether we should therefore maybe–just maybe–consider limiting such freedom of expression in order to stop hurting Islamic feelings.

Now I can only stomach so much of this obvious treason and blatant propaganda so I don’t watch much news, but I’d bet my small stack that the person who was made a temporary scapegoat for these American deaths–caused by the Obama administration’s own dereliction of duty–was some small-town native-born American Christian, possibly even a European-American.

Now will folks like Jim here be prepared to reverse their accusations and play pin-the-racism on the donkey when this scenario becomes as clear as it soon will to everybody , and defend the rights of American Christians–of any ethnic background–to be free from the Obama administration’s hateful deceptions?

“Face the Nation” to give the public an update on the available information. She explained that it was too early to draw “definitive conclusions,” but the “best information we have to date” suggested the violence “began spontaneously … as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo” in response to the anti-Islam internet video.

The ambassador then added, “But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons.” Asked about a possible al Qaeda role, Rice said this was unclear, explaining, “I think this is one of the things we’ll have to determine.”

For John McCain and other increasingly-hysterical Obama administration critics, Rice was lying and her use of the word “spontaneous” is itself an outrageous scandal. It’s not altogether clear why this is causing far-right apoplexy, but this is where we find ourselves at this point.

In an interesting twist, CBS News obtained the CIA talking points given to Rice in preparation of her interview.

CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan says the talking points, which were also given to members of the House intelligence committee, make no reference to terrorism being a likely factor in the assault, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. […]

The CIA’s talking points read as follows: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

This dog won’t hunt. In recent testimony it was disclosed by the CIA that they provided a preliminary analysis which was the basis for Rice’s announcement. This analysis was later – but not immediately or even quickly – corrected.

There is a difference between working from an analysis, and sifting through multiple and conflicting sources and performing one’s own analysis. Presumably this performance is the CIA’s role, not the administration’s. And presumably the administration should be relying on the CIA for analysis rather than second-guessing or going it alone, as did the neocons when they led us into Iraq.

I think that focus should remain on real issues and TAC especially should not be drawn into a time-wasting witch hunt.

I don’t get it. Maybe I’m a daft liberal, but I still don’t get What The Big Deal is about Benghazi. What wrongdoing–exactly–is being alleged here?

There is a lot of things we could be talking about: Is US foreign policy in the Middle East wise (both under the Obama Administration, and under previous presidents)? Were security arrangements for the Ambassador appropriate to the conditions on the ground?

Instead, we’re getting a whole lot of investigation into the particulars of the initial claim–since debunked and walked back–that protestors of the infamous and offensive anti-Muslim video, that did rile crowds in Cairo, may have had something to do with the events in Libya.

As Clara Peller once said in the TV commercials: Where’s the beef?

* Is it alleged that Ambassador Rice (or other administration officials) should have offered up a “no comment” if the State Department wasn’t yet certain as the the circumstances surrounding the attack?

* Is it alleged that the State Department was not competent in its investigation–that it should have concluded sooner than it did, that protesters were not involved?

* Or is it alleged that the protestor theory was over-promoted (or fabricated outright), for some political reason–i.e. that the Administration was deliberately lying or attempting to mislead?

The first seems unworthy of an investigation. The second, perhaps; though I’m curious what time-frame for reaching a firm conclusion would be considered acceptable.

But Pat Buchanan, in posing the question “Did Obama’s UN ambassador deliberately deceive us about Benghazi–or was she herself deceived?” seems to be alleging the third: that someone in the administration cooked up the “protest” theory for some reason. Pat offers a motive–that al Qaeda involvement would have undermined President Obama’s re-election efforts; but this motive seems to be belied by actual events: There’s little evidence that Benghazi affected the President’s political standing, even after the protest theory was found to be incorrect (and acknowledged as so by the Administration); and when Romney tried to bring it up at the second debate, the President promptly handed him his ass on a silver platter. Romney ignored the subject completely at Debate #3.

Buchanan’s argument that “Obama held off calling it a terror attack for weeks in TV interviews” is laughable–his Rose Garden statement directly addressed the subject; but wasn’t technically an “interview”, so it apparently does not count.

Furthermore–there seems to be plenty of evidence that there was conflicting intelligence at State in the days after the attack. I have yet to see anyone claim that there was NO evidence to support the protest theory; for a claim of deliberate deceit to be sustained, it would seem that this ought to be a required element. Deception requires knowledge that something is (or is likely to be) false; absent that, someone who makes a false statement is simply wrong, not a liar.

In a prior article, Pat compared this to Watergate–something he certainly knows lots about, given his position within the Nixon Administration. But in Watergate, even before Nixon illegally ordered a coverup, there was a case to crack: someone had burglarized DNC headquarters, and the questions to be answered were “who” and “why”. In Benghazi-gate, nobody has even established that wrongdoing has occurred, which ought to be a pre-requisite for figuring out just who is to blame.

Bryan, I stand ready to be corrected, except it isn’t going to happen. You are obviously a bit rabid, and as a physician I’m telling you it isn’t good for your health, mental and otherwise. Go on You Tube and look at the video of Rice (ambassador to the UN, not a military or White House figure) and her original statements, in which she qualifies everything she says with”This is what we know now, it may change as we get more information.” As Myron so accurately says, the dog ain’t gonna hunt this squirrel.

“I’d bet my small stack that the person who was made a temporary scapegoat for these American deaths–caused by the Obama administration’s own dereliction of duty–was some small-town native-born American Christian, possibly even a European-American. ”

He was an expat Egyptian Coptic Christian, not an American citizen. This is not news.

Gosh Jim, I wouldn’t want to endanger my health by telling the truth. Maybe I can float on over to Cuba, parrot whatever line of garbage the ruling party wants to hear over there and get a better diagnosis from their apparatchiks, eh?

Myron, if what you’re saying is correct then I ask you to excuse me for being so poorly informed. I’m sure most Americans are already very keen to such information so it should all work out just fine per tutti in the end,right?

Oh and by the way, Jimbo, I’ll try to keep my blood pressure down so I stay nice and pale for you next time, instead of red in the face. Maybe you’ll take the message better if the deliverer is a little lighter in the face? Maybe? You don’t have to answer that.

I’m not going to praise the White House’s clarity here, nor the fact that State and the CIA managed to be visibly on different pages for several days. (I suspect because the CIA was trying to pass off whatever they needed a few dozen agents for in Benghazi as “lots of office workers for the consulate, in the office annex.” But I don’t know.)

But it was tied to the video. Really. We know that because the Ansar al Sharia people attacking the consulate explained to reporters that that was what they were upset about, the insult to the prophet. Which given the timing, hours after Cairo and as enraged-about-the-video protests were happening in two dozen places, is not terribly surprising.

So it was not “spontaneous” in the sense that a mob of random citizens is, but was in the sense that “you create a distraction at the front, we’ll go in the back” is not the sort of plan that takes months of careful strategizing to create.

The White House is guilty of inconsistent messaging here, but that is not a high crime. And the sneering talking point “they blame it on a video” is one step from the version “they blame it on a video which no one saw, because I have chosen to believe that Egyptian Rush wasn’t playing it for his audience, and there was no mob in Cairo or anywhere else.”

Bryan I’m not sure that most Americans remember what they read or heard a month ago. I don’t watch television and I mostly read the business press so things don’t get drowned out by Talking Points.

For the record I don’t assume everything will work out just fine. I do believe that in violent situations the streams of information are multiple, contradictory, and take a while to sort out. And Petraeus is now saying intel didn’t want to tip their hand on what they knew to the folks they wanted to go after, i.e. to warn them. That’s an operational concern.

Separate from that is the need to deal out information in the meantime as opposed to going into lockdown, and folks like Rice get stuck with that job. Certainly Rice was stuck with the prelim analysis. This is one the the few times I agree with the other Rice (Condi).

The folks at the embassy were sure as hell worried about the video and its implications since they “shamefully tweeted an apology” concurrent to the demonstration and attack. That was a big point then but isn’t now. I guess that one has been spun dry.

My main concern here is that there is a rush to indict rather than a rush to find out. These things can waste time and resources by focusing on a desired outcome rather than focusing on revealing the truth. Having sat through a lawsuit I am familiar with that.

Anyway, to me, conflating the lack of instant precision and clarity with a desire to deceive and cover up is on par with the ideas that the previous administration was complicit in the 911 attack, and the government is poisoning us with chemtrails.

I am truly tired of the politicization of this story. Of course it was terrorism, the endless debate on Fox news seems to be quibbling over how long it took for the terrorist operation to get planned out, whether 3 hours after an incendiary video or 3 months leading up to a 9/11 commemorative attack, but I’m not sure why either option should indicate a massive cover up.

An Ambassador was killed. Clearly, an investigation of the security situation is in order. And it is underway. Let it take its course. There are far bigger and more important things going on in the world, such as the fact that the Middle East is starting to tip towards a real conflagration right now, with rockets hitting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv both, and hot spots on the Syria-Turkey border, the Syria-Israel border, the Egypt-Gaza border, the Israel-Gaza border, and street protests in several of the above, plus Jordan for good measure. And the IAEA announces that Iran is set to double its nuclear production capacity. Top off your fuel tanks and then call your Congressman and tell him or her to quit with the press conferences already, and pass a budget deal so that they can deal with the interesting times that may be just around the corner.

The Obama administration committed the US to the overthrow of the government of a country in which we had no strategic interest and which was no threat of our national security. In so doing, he helped to install an Islamic extremist regime which – unsurprisingly – stood by and let a group of al Qaeda thugs kill our ambassador and a couple of Navy SEALs. Ironically, just a few months before, the Obama administration leaked information to the makers of a film about the heroic assassination of an Islamic extremist leader by Navy SEALs which was coincidentally released just days before the election.

Now, this same administration is attempting to defend Susan Rice by suggesting that she is innocent of allegations that she tried to mislead the public about the Benghazi Affair because she was just parroting what she was told by the administration because she either did not know what had actually happened or was content to lie to protect her boss.

These tactics suggest that this administration is either diabolically clever or else that affirmative action is a bigger problem than any of us had previously thought.

Given many of Susan Rice’s past professional history, her erroneous depiction of what transpired in Bengazi, whether intentional or otherwise, is not incomprehensible.

However, I think Mr. Buchanan, like others, is still interested in what really happened because one can only wonder why an Ambassador, with not even minimal security, would go to a site that was known to be proximate to training camps affiliated with Al-Qaeda elements.

Was it a fact that there were no CIA interrogations being held in those facilities; was it a fact that the Ambassador was not on a mission to make arrangements with certain of those elements in the vicinity to offer weaponry and other assets to overthrow Assad?

If there is any doubt remaining about those and other questions, the ill-founded flutterings of Susan Rice and others parroting their narrative will continue to invite questions about the evolution and coherence of their explanations.

The election is over and can everyone calm down there simply is no conspiracy here.

The video by an Egyptian ex pat, Cptic Christian, non US citizen, with multiple convictions for fraud, was an issue. There were real, non imaginary demonstrations and riots in Cairo and Tunis, and Algiers and Pakistan and Beirut. The idea that what was happening in Benghazzi was totally unconnected would not have been clear at the time and I am not sure is 100% clear now.

The attack by an extremist militia faction in Benghazzi we now know was a local issue, and was an attack by one of the militia factions in Benghazzi against a CIA operation which had been supporting a different milita faction in the confused post civil war situation there.

There was no 7 hour conflict. There were 2 seperates 1-2 hour attacks, one at the ‘consulate’ in which the Ambassador was put in a poorly constructed ‘safe-room’ and had enough smoke inhalation that he subsequently died despite being rescued and evacuated to the local hospital. A second attack on the annexe some 5 hours later saw the deaths of 2 CIA ex SEAL operators, in an attack on what is now clear was a significant CIA facility which was defended robustly. It was running gun running operations from there and may also have been operating as an holding facility, for taking captive militia prisoners.

The fantasy that if only people had known the truth they would have voted for Romney is simply a fantasy.
3000 people die on American Soil in the first 9/11 and the initial reaction is rally round the President.
Thousands die in the war in Iraq and the initial reaction is rally round the President.

4 die in a battle in Benghazzi and the reaction would have been throw the bum out, I do not think so.

We have a large covert operation going on, in an unstable region, possibly without the full permission of the local government, and the initial reaction is let’s take some time to clarify what is going on. While Romney reaction while the bullets were still flying was attack the administration.

Whatever happened in Benghazi is not worth all these attacks on Susan Rice. So what if the president said that we have “decimated al-quieda” then there is an attack? No one has ever disputed that we could be attacked again at anytime. If one wants to reference a clueless president, one merely needs to look at the last president for reference material.

These attacks by John McCain and Lindsey Graham are so obviously partisan, so obviously desperate, so obviously a waste of time, that I wonder if the Republican party has anything legitimate to offer anymore. All they present to the public is hate and disrespect.

Patrick’s summary (the comment, with no last name) is more consistent with what I’ve read in the news. Yes, there was a protest, yes, an armed militia did act under cover of that protest in a decidedly nonspontaneous manner, no it was not clear EXACTLY what was happening, and yes, Susan Rice’s public statements acknowledged that available intelligence did not have all the dots connected.

One does wish President Obama would say more or less what Patrick wrote here, rather than delivering a blustering defense of his subordinates and stopping with that. One thing wrong with liberals and Democrats is that they suffer an irrational fear of what some lame-brained talk show host may make of this or that. Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign her post for fear of a Glenn Beck screed, although O’Reilly later apologized for spouting Breitbart’s drivel without doing his homework. The president of the NAACP was equally cowardly and craven.

President Obama needs to cast this thinking from his aides aside, and step forth as the man we voted for.